In My Dreams It's Me And You

I sat on that bench with a Brian Haner Jr., a friend I hadn‘t seen in more that five years and opened up to him as if it was only yesterday that we were teenagers chatting about everything going on in our lives.
I looked at the ground as I told him everything- right from the beginning.

“I guess it all began about a month after you guys left for your tour. Ma. . . He had promised me that he’d stay in touch but at this point I had yet to receive anything. Everyday I longed for a letter, a phone call- even a shitty postcard would have been enough! But I got nothing!
“Soon I began dreading each day; I hated waking up to just more disappointment, I cried myself to sleep at night, feeling alone without my best friends.
“By the third month into your tour I had begun cutting myself to overpower the pain of loneliness.”

I paused in the middle of my story to hold out my wrists where, if you looked close enough, there were faint white lines that had been made by the kiss of a razor blade.

Brian stared at them in shock, unable to look away as he examined them with morbid fascination, “Why didn’t you try to contact me or Jimmy. . . Or any of the guys for that matter?”

I smiled sadly, tears pricking at my eyes. He just couldn’t understand. Try as he might, he just couldn’t.

“I thought you guys didn’t want me around anymore,” I whispered. “And I didn’t want to bother you anymore.”

My old best friend’s big brown eyes became overwhelmed with concern and he pulled me into his huge tattooed arms.

“Oh Eva! You should’ve never, even for a second believed that, we loved- and still do. We all assumed Matt was staying in contact. He was the one you were best friends with.”

“It’s okay,” I mumbled moving further into Brian’s embrace.

I sat like that for a few moments, just being held in his strong arms, enjoying the silence. His embrace felt familiar; it felt safe. Brian had always been protective of me and being his arms reminded me of being defended by him as a teenager.

Eventually though I pulled back. I smiled when he gave me a look that asked if I was okay. In response I took a deep breath and continued where my story had left off.

“You guys were supposed to finish touring after five months. I couldn’t wait! I was going to get my friends back and we could talk about why you all had ignored me. But then I was given bad news. By now, I was used to getting whatever information I could from your weekly blog posts on Myspace- my only contact with you all. One day I was reading a post and it told me that your tour had been extended by nearly seven months. I couldn’t believe it! Five months had been agony. How could I endure seven more?”

I looked straight in to Brian’s chocolate brown eyes, “And do you know what hurt the most?”
He shook his head, looking almost too scaqred to speak.

“The fact that he never even told me about the extension, as if I no longer mattered.”

Tears began leaking from my eyes and I took a minute to compose myself before speaking again.

“Everyday after that news seemed so hard. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat or drink, couldn’t even for to school or talk to the few friends I still had. It was like I was still there in body but not in mind.
“Then one day it all got too much. I decided that the life I was living was worth living anymore. So I wrote Matt a letter that I left on my desk, grabbed a bottle of my Mom’s sleeping pills off her bedside locker and a bottle of Jack Daniels from the kitchen. That night, exactly six months after you guys left, I tried to take my own life.”

Brian just stared at me, his eyes wide in disbelief and shock as he took in my confession. The one that not even four therapists or Sarah could get out of me.
He didn’t speak though and for that I was grateful- I wanted to finish telling my story before he asked any questions.

“My father found me passed out on my bed, all the pills gone and only a dribble left in the bottle of Jack. He had come up to call me down for one of our rare ‘family’ dinners but instead had to call an ambulance for his only child.
“They pumped my stomach and within a few days I was well enough to go home, but instead I was sent to Sunnyvale Rehabilitation Centre a few towns away. There it was discovered that I suffer from clinical depression which had surfaced due to the dramatic change in my life. I was prescribed anti-depressants and sent to group counselling sessions. It was at these sessions that I met Sarah, another suicide gone wrong. After a few sessions we were best friends and after three months we checked ourselves out of rehab. We packed up our belongings, got some money together and moved as far away from Huntington Beach as possible.”

I sighed and looked back down at my hands as I intertwined my fingers and sat uncomfortably in the silence that now descended upon us. I chanced a glance up at Brian through my brown fringe and saw that he was watching me with pained eyes. He didn’t seem to know what to say so instead he pulled me into his arms again, holding me tight against his muscled chest.

“Don’t ever think of doing that to yourself again,” He whispered forcefully. “You mean too much to all of us.”

I smiled into his chest even though he couldn’t see me, “That means a lot Brian but it’s okay, that’s all behind me now. I’m a lot better than I used to be.”

“That’s good then,” I could hear the smiled in his voice and that made me happy.

“Oh Brian,” I murmured. “I’ve missed you guys so fucking much!”

His hand stroked my wavy brown hair soothingly as he whispered, “We missed you too. It killed us when we arrived home after that tour and went straight to your house only for your parents to tell us you’d moved away with some friend.” He sighed, “No-one was more cut up that Matt though- he fucking misses you babe.”

I pulled out of his arms, anger filling my eyes.

“If he missed me so fucking much why didn’t he ever call or write? He made me feel so fucking worthless!”

Tears of anger and sadness escaped my eyes and I suddenly began to sob. Brian’s arms tightened around me, protecting me from the world.

“Shh Babe, it’s now. I’m here for you,” His hands moved up and down my back calming me.

We stayed like that, me lying on Brian’s chest, until I was all cried out. I pulled my head off his chest and looked him in the eye.

“Thank you.”

He smiled and it wasn’t his infamous Synyster Gates smirk that I had seen in every picture for the past few years, no instead it was the smile that belonged to my eighteen year old friend Brian Haner Jr.

“No need to thank me,” He whispered.

I nodded and leaned back against his shoulder, resting my face in the crook of his neck, just happy to be close to him after so many years.
We sat in silence for a few more minutes before Brian spoke.

“Earlier, when I met you in the record shop, you said you don’t listen to Avenged. Why?”

I sighed, tracing invisible patterns on Brian’s black button-up shirt that was visible through his open jacket, “I guess it was just too painful to hear you all play after you left me.”

“Oh okay.”

Then there was silence once more as we just enjoyed being together for the first time in too long. But again, Brian broke it.

“You should talk to Matt. I mean, we’re in town for a few days so you could meet up and talk about what happened,” He sounded so persuasive. “Things could be like they were before.”

What he was offering sounded so tempting but I knew things could never be like there were when we were teenagers.

“I can’t Brian, I’m sorry,” I mumbled against the soft skin of his neck.

He suddenly pushed me away so abruptly that I gasped. He looked me sternly in the eye, “Do you not miss him?”

I shook my head fiercely, how could he think such a thing?

“Of course I miss him! Everyday it hurts knowing he’s not going to walk through the door and be my best friend again. But that’s not the reason I can’t talk to him.”

His brown eyes darkened with confusion and his brow furrowed, “Then what is the problem?”

I looked down at my hands, unable to look him in the eye, “Because although I love him I also hate him and have yet to forgive him”

Brian reached out and took my hand in his, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles softly, “What do you mean babe?”

I sighed, irritated that he couldn’t understand. But, because I knew he was trying I took a shaky breath and explained to him, “I love him because he was, and always will be, my best friend. But I hate him for what he did- do you understand how fucking hard it was without him? One night Mom came home drunk and started hitting me and there was no best friend for me to run to.”

I broke off to catch my breath after my mini-rant while Brian continued to rub his thumb across my hand and whispered, “And why won’t you forgive him?”

I looked and saw him watching me with watery eyes. I shocked me; Brian wasn’t one to cry. . . Ever. It showed me that he was really upset about the lost friendship.

“You okay?” I asked softly.

He nodded and his large, tanned hand squeezed my small one, “I just can’t believe what we did to you. You’re not the same Tofu we left behind in Huntington five years ago.”

I smirked at his use of my nickname again and shook my head, “You’re right Brian, I’m not the same little girl you left behind. I changed a lot in those first six months, and then therapy changed me even more. I grew up Brian, probably faster than I should have.”

“I. . . I’m sorry.”

I smiled, “No need to be sorry, the past is the past. We can’t change it.”

He nodded, “I guess.”

I took my phone out of the little black handbag I had on my shoulder and saw that it was after one in the morning. I had work later and had to get some sleep.

I stood up and straightened my knee length, grey dress before turning to my companion.
“Would you be a gentleman and walk me to my car?”

He chuckled and stood up. I could hear the cracking of his back as he stretched and then offered me his arm, “Of course m’lady.”

I giggled and linked my arm through his as we began making our way to the car park where I had parked my Toyota.
As we approached the car I couldn’t help but notice that Brian’s eyebrows rose when he saw its appearance. He looked as if he was going to laugh so I punched him in the arm.

He pouted, his brown eyes going all round and big, “What was that for?”

I laughed, “You were going to diss my baby.”

He shook his head indignantly, “I wasn’t- I swear!”

I looked him up and down with my eyebrows raised in disbelief. He just stood there his hand raised, palms forward as if he was going to be arrested. His eyes were wide, feigning innocence while his mouth quirked into that cocky smirk Mr. Synyster Gates was famous for.

“I don’t believe you,” I told him folding my arms against my chest as I leaned against my car.

“Okay. . . Maybe I was going to laugh at it,” He admitted.

I glared at him, the same way I did when we were teenagers, the one that always used to make him cower and admit to things he did wrong.

“I was only going to laugh a little,” He tried to convince me.

It was nice to know I still had power over him.

I rolled my eyes, “Whatever Bri, I’ve got to get going. I have work later.”

He nodded and watched as I unlocked my car and opened the driver’s door. I was about to get in when he spoke, “Eva?”

I turned, “Yeah?”

“Uhm. . . Would you. . . I mean. . . would it be okay if I told Jimmy about finding you?” He stuttered, obviously apprehensive of my answer.

Jimmy Sullivan, my first and only serious boyfriend in my twenty-three years on this earth. He was amazing. My best friend after Matt; he was always there for me. We started dating when I was fifteen and lasted until just after my sixteenth birthday, deciding to be ‘just friends’. It worked better that way. Jimmy was like my gay guy friend- except he was actually straight- who went shopping with me and stayed over in my house when I needed a friend to bitch to- Matt had never been very comfortable with my bitching.
Thinking about Jimmy made me suddenly miss the tall, skinny, black haired, crazy boy I was friends with more than ever.

I nodded, “Tell Jimmy I miss him.”

Tears were streaking my face again and I laughed a little at what an emotional wreck I was tonight.
Brian smiled sadly and brushed the tears off my face. His gesture reminded me of what Matt did on the day they left and it made me cry harder.

After a few minutes I had calmed down enough to speak through my tears, “I should go now.”

Brian nodded, “Of course. Uhm . . . Would you mind if Jim and I stopped by the record shop tomorrow, I mean later today?” He chuckled a little. “I just know that he’ll want to see you.”

I smiled and nodded, “I’ll be there all day so call over whenever.”

He smiled back and leaned down to kiss my cheek, “I’m so glad I found you again Tofu.”

“I’m glad you did too Bri,” I whispered.

He hugged me for a long time before letting go. I looked up and saw that his eyes were watering but he put a smile on his face, “Just don’t go missing again, okay?”

I giggled, “I won’t.”

I climbed into my car and made myself comfortable. Brian said goodbye once more and closed my door for me. I started the ignition, waved once more at Biran and drove off.

Well today was just plain weird.